Inner Excellence: Train Your Mind for Extraordinary Performance and the Best Possible Life

by Jim Murphy

We’ve focused on short-term wins, temporary happiness, and surface-level achievements, when we were created for so much more.

an extraordinary outer world is worthless without a meaningful inner one, is it not?

worthless indeed

every single one of us wears a set of glasses. These glasses were given to us by our families, by our childhood experiences, by the books we’ve read, by the experiences we’ve had, by the movies we’ve seen. These visions of reality affect the whole of our lives.

The life you’ve been given is meant to develop your character

To improve performance (and your life) in a consistent, powerful way, you must change your beliefs about who you are and what’s possible.

The world you see and interact with isn’t reality; it’s the one your mind has created, based on the way you’ve interpreted and processed the events in your life so far.

i always think about this, how our reality is not actually reality

You’re not ultimately happy or sad because of your circumstances, but rather because of what you think about your circumstances.

i always say this!!

Your ability to learn and grow and maximize your potential is directly correlated to your ability to embrace failure.

I compete to raise the level of excellence in my life, to learn and grow in order to raise it in others.

We crave great experiences and meaningful relationships and we long to reach our full potential. We want to be challenged and creative. We want to grow. We want freedom to live with passion and pursue our dreams regardless of what people think, how much money we make, or what level of status we acquire.

We’re all human, with the same deep desires and concerns. We all want great experiences and meaningful relationships; we all want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We all want to love and laugh and be successful. It’s human nature. But each of us also has a mind that has judgmental thoughts, produces desires that hurt us, and creates beliefs that limit us. This all occurs because our minds have not been trained to manage the one thing on which everything hinges: our thoughts.

Selfless actualizers are able to be alone with their feelings. They desire solitude to a greater degree than the average person. Selfless actualizers enjoy time for quiet reflection and do not always have to have people around them.

me n my journal against the world !!

you start losing perspective. You’ve kind of climbed the ladder of success, and when you get up there, you realize somehow the ladder was leaning on the wrong building.

“The single biggest failure of society [is,] we simply don’t do a good enough job teaching boys how to be men,”

Amen

If you have inner strength, you move out into the world with peace and confidence, no matter what your circumstances are. If your inner life is unstable, you move out into the world with weakness, no matter how much money or success you have.

The price of anything, as Henry David Thoreau said, is the amount of life you exchange for it.

you go Thoreau

though you may win, it may not be your best effort, which lures you into laziness.

ughhhh

In the pursuit of a courageous life, we must continually learn about ourselves—about who we really are and what’s truly meaningful.

We have more technology, more time-savers… and less time.

holy shiiii, i could go on abt this

Frustration and anxiety emerge when what we feel has to happen doesn’t happen, and the gap widens between how we want to feel and how we are feeling.

when someone asks me why I cry so often, I say, “For the same reason I laugh so often—because I’m paying attention.” I tell them that we can choose to be perfect and admired or to be real and loved. We must decide.

BECAUSE I'M PAYING ATTENTION!!

Bill Belichick won six Super Bowls as head coach of the New England Patriots, he coached the Cleveland Browns to a losing record for five years and then got fired.

you go Bill

One of the biggest mistakes we make in our stories is confusing our circumstances with our thoughts about those circumstances.

One skill that selfless actualizers with Inner Excellence have developed is that they don’t get mentally trapped by circumstances they can’t control.

The problem is not the problem; the problem is your judgment of it.

The ego has certain needs, and when those needs aren’t met, we get embarrassed, offended, or irritated.

how could two people experience the exact same thing and have one person be traumatized while the other simply laughs it off?

everything depends on how much you give a f*** frr

If there’s one art that has become more and more lost in our busy lives, it’s the ability to play like a kid, completely free.

Let’s consider an example of unconditional love in everyday life. Imagine it’s rush hour and you’re driving in heavy traffic. You let someone cut in front of you. That’s a loving thing to do. But if you’re looking for a wave of thanks, then your love just became conditional.

loving your work not just for what you can get out of it (perhaps a corner office or a big payday) but for who you can become while pursuing self-mastery.

Being your best occurs most often when it’s a by-product, not the end goal.